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FEATURE CINEMA

C ivil War documents a group of journalists - including partisan extremist militias regularly commit war crimes. Just days away from the Capitol’s surrender, Dunst’s Lee sets out to the White House in the hope of getting the final interview with Nick Offerman’s president. “This movie feels like a cautionary fable of what happens when people don’t communicate with each other,” says Dunst, ”when nobody listens to each other, when you silence journalists, when we lose a shared truth.” Civil War boldly imagines the human consequences of losing this shared idea of a nation. In this America - when the fabric of society has been torn apart - there is only the individual, and their relentless drive to survive. Set in the near future, Civil War sees a team of journalists travel across the United States during the rapidly escalating Second American Civil War that has engulfed the entire nation. Words Gill Pringle CIVIL WAR photographers Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny - struggling to survive under the dystopian dictatorship government, where

T he film follows one man’s lifelong quest for vengeance against the corrupt leaders who killed his mother, and has him rampaging through a fictional Gotham-like city in India, laying waste to one bad guy after another. The film’s title derives from the ancient legend of Hananan, a deity whom our hero imitates with a monkey mask while earning a living fighting anonymously in underground tournaments. Patel, who also stars, makes an impressive directorial debut, and has crafted a violent and gritty assault on the senses that plays out like a chaotic mix of Bloodsport and Nobody , while infusing strong cultural themes with a bold Hollywood sensibility. Jordan Peele ( Get Out, Nope ) serves as producer through his Monkeypaw Productions company, lending the project a sense of elevation and added gravitas. The film also boasts an incredible international cast including Sharlto Copley ( District 9 ), Sobhita Dhulipala ( Psycho Raman ), and Pitobash ( Million Dollar Arm ). The film was met with a standing ovation at its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas last month. On the red carpet, Patel explained how physically demanding filming Monkey Man was, and described the injuries sustained during production. “A stuntman stamped on my foot and broke it,” he said. “So that was a bit of a problem, but we got through that and carried on. Then I tore my shoulder, and then I broke my hand. But we carried on filming. I got on a plane after filming the rest of that scene and we put a screw in my hand. The doctor said, ‘You cannot put any weight on it’, and so we carried on shooting and we had to change all of the choreography to one-handed movements, which were very difficult. It was a real process of ferocity, and trying to find a way to get it done.” Oscar nominee Dev Patel ( Lion , Slumdog Millionaire ) steps into the ring for his directorial debut Monkey Man , a hard-hitting action thriller that puts John Wick to shame. Words Glenn Cochrane MONKEY MAN

“People talk about collateral damage in war - if you are fighting a war in a built-up area, civilians will get killed,” says director Alex Garland. “You often hear generals talking in those terms in a sort of factual way, which is objectively correct. It is also true that you get, on a more domestic scale, a kind of terrible savagery.” The dark genius of Garland’s film is in his radical repurposing of the images, tools, and euphemisms of modern war - airstrikes, civilian targets, collateral damage - onto American soil. “That is any nation that gets into conflict, whether it's civil war or war with a neighbour - that’s just what war is now,” he says. “If you are letting something slide towards that state, just be aware that's what the state looks like. The famous phrase, ‘If you forget history, you're doomed to repeat it’ - it's important to understand that nobody is immune. No country is immune from that. Because it’s nothing to do with countries, it’s to do with people,” warns the director. Cast as veteran reporter Joel, Narcos actor Wagner Moura agrees. “When I was reading the script, it created a cognitive disruption in my mind,” he says. “Images that we are used to seeing far away and on TV, taking place in the United States - it’s crazy, it’s scary.”

Monkey Man is in cinemas April 4

Civil War is in cinemas April 11

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